Faint
by afickleflakes
Summary: It wasn't a word Green was familiar with, this strange word - 'death'. Having been battling with Pokemon for most of his life, a word that frequented his vocabulary to describe something similar depicted nothing more than unconsciousness. GameverseGurire


A/N: Right, so. I haven't been very active. At all. I'm sorry. I just kind of lost my inspiration for a long time. It was pretty difficult to write this, but now I'm into Pokemon Originalshipping fandom and I thought I might want to give it a shot. I hope it turned out okay. I'm not really sure how to go along with this, so the ending - or not ending - is really odd. Maybe it'll have more installments later. I'm not very familiar with everything in Pokemon, and I kind of merged the gameverse and the mangaverse together, but if you're trying to imagine what's happening, it's gameverse Red I had in mind. The Red from the first ever Red version. Green kind of looks the same however you may imagine him, so... yeah. Credits to my Onee-chan, ink-cap on deviantart (do go check her out, she's awesome) for beta-ing. (:

I don't own Red or Green, or Pokemon.

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Green blinked weary emerald eyes. The dark purple circles under his eyes did no justice to the actual fatigue he was feeling - the fatigue he had endured for minutes, hours, days, weeks, months… The fatigue he endured for everyone else for what felt like years. Because it was his fault.

He kissed the back of Red's hand.

Green stood up shakily, his legs numb from sitting cross-legged too long. Red's hand still in his, he ran his other hand through his hair soundlessly.

The brown locks were dry and matted in certain places from neglect.

Letting Red's hand rest on the mattress of the bed, Green walked stiffly to the window.

Outside, in the distance, amidst snow-capped houses and snow-blocked streets, was a graveyard.

And beyond that, loomed Mount Silver.

Green turned away. He couldn't bear look at it. It hurt too fucking much.

He turned around to look at Red.

_Beautiful_, _silent_ _Red_.

The black locks on his head contrasted the paleness of his face. He looked like a corpse with that pallor, a greyish whiteness not unlike that of snow. Dirty snow, tinted grey, not blue. White-grey.

Like _death_.

Green didn't really think about death. Nor had he given the topic of disappearing; leaving; never returning any form of consideration.

Not much, anyway.

So far, the only people who were - supposedly - _dear_ to him that had passed away, or gone missing, weren't people he really _knew_.

People like his mom and dad.

Green's emerald green gaze bore into Red's unmoving face, blank and pale as it always was. It had been that way for a while.

The eyelids were unmoving, peaceful, even. If Green hadn't known better, he'd have assumed Red was sleeping.

But he wasn't. Red wasn't sleeping.

All because Green hadn't done anything.

Green's eyes burned with withheld tears and fatigue from days of insomnia, days of hoping and worrying too much that Red would wake up and they'd all be asleep. His worry didn't allow anyone else to carry more responsibility over Red.

It was his fault.

He had known, but done nothing. No-one deserved the blame more than he did.

It was _all his fault_.

Guilt choked its way up his throat from the tight knot in his stomach.

Had Green done something, done _anything_ to stop what he knew was coming before it came, he might have been able to stop this.

And his best friend and rival would not be there, on that bed, lying motionless, still as stone.

Yellow was sleeping softly in a small armchair in the corner, her heart-shaped face creased with worry even in slumber. The rims of her eyes and her eyelids were red from crying, her cheeks flushed from the cold. Pika and Chuchu slept soundlessly near her, Chuchu curled in Yellow's lap.

Leaf was sitting in another chair, closer to the bed. Her expression mirrored Green's; blank with worry and fear, her blue eyes clouded and glazed over. Like Yellow, her eyes were pink-rimmed and her cheeks were flushed, if only slightly. Leaf's hair was dry and unkempt, probably from having slept only two to three hours in the past two days, wishing the same things going through Green's head.

"_Don't die, dammit. For fuck's sake, don't leave us."_

Green turned the red and white cap over in his hands, fingering the fabric restlessly. He stared at the ebony locks framing his friend's ever narrowing face, remembering times when he had fallen asleep, tired after their friendly Pokemon battles. Remembering how the same cap he know held in his hands had been knocked right off his head and into Green's lap as his friend and rival had leant his head right on his shoulder.

Green closed his eyes, recalling the day when those same charcoal locks of hair had tickled his cheek and neck as the breeze swirled around them on a mid-autumn afternoon. He recalled the smell of the wood and the autumn breeze as he watched his rival's pale eyelids flickering only so rarely.

Green longed for the crimson orbs hiding behind those eyelids. He wanted to get lost in their fiery depths in the heat of battle and watch as they lit up with excitement, adrenaline pounding through their veins and their hearts on fire.

Green's gaze flickered towards the window and the weather outside.

_Snow_.

_Winter_.

_Cold_.

So near Mt Silver, winter brought on blizzards. Terrifying blizzards. Green wondered briefly what winter was like on Mt Silver then, considering what it was like down here near the foot of the mountain.

It was all his fault.

No wonder things were like this.

Everything felt dreary, cold, _dead_. Outside, the world was veiled in white, snow casting the moon's silver luminescence into a ghostly glow. Normally, Green would think this beautiful.

It was the perfect winter night.

The angle at which the moonlight reflected off the snow, the flawless blue sheen of clean snow, untainted by mankind's pollution; nature truly outdid itself sometimes.

Even so, instead of beauty, there was a chilling eeriness about the entire scene. Snow meant cold. And taking into consideration the state of things – the silence, and the IV stuck into Red's pale arm - cold meant _death_.

It wasn't a word Green was familiar with, this strange word - 'death'. Having been battling with Pokemon for most of his life, a word that frequented his vocabulary to describe something similar depicted nothing more than unconsciousness.

_Faint._

Had Red been awake, though, he might have been able to appreciate the sight more. But, then again, maybe it wouldn't appeal to him as much, what with him having been on that stupid mountain for three years almost, with Green visiting with supplies only just once or twice a week. He had had no change of scene.

Either way, Green had to admit. The sight one was to behold.

But the beauty of nature outside was lost to the room's occupants, silence chilling the room to temperatures below the 40 degrees below zero temperatures outside. Sometimes silence was loud, suffocating, even. This wasn't one of those times. This was dead silence. Green almost couldn't hear himself breathe. Was he even breathing in the first place?

The heater hummed, sputtering ever so often in the corner, hinting at just how long it had been running.

Days, weeks, months.

And now, like Red, it was dying.

Green turned away from the cold glass and took a furtive step towards the bed from where he was by the window, and then another, and another. Finally he stood next to the bed, his hand inches away from the cold and pale hand of his rival and good friend.

The ebony haired boy's body shuddered slightly from some kind of hidden pain Green would never know. He bent at the waist and reached out to brush a few stray strands away from his eyes, just in case his dear friend and rival chose that moment to wake up.

Just in case.

Somehow, Green found himself reduced to his knees. The floor was cold and hard, and as he grasped the pale hand on the bed, he found it nearly colder than the frozen floor under him. His rival's skin hadn't lost its unusual pallor from when he'd first been admitted to the hospital.

Green entwined their fingers, and with his other hand, carefully rubbed the back of his friend's ivory coloured hand with his thumb. The skin was smooth and pasty, like the rest of him.

Snow. Cold, white snow. It was as though that stupid mountain had sucked the soul out of him, swallowed it whole, leaving a cold, white shell of pain and stillness in its wake.

Green closed his eyes.

"Red," he whispered, placing his forehead against the cold, ivory skin.

The lifeline on the monitor began to lose rhythm, and the pulse became unsteady. The heart monitor attached to his rival began to beep loudly, and in moments, the room was thrown into chaos.

Leaf looked up to see what was wrong. Her gaze landed on the beeping machine in the corner, and her blank face morphed slowly into an expression of pain and fear.

"Green, don't…" she whispered, tears pooling at the sides of her eyes.

Green paid her no mind.

"Red, wake up."

Yellow stirred at all the beeping, just as Nurse Joy and Chansey rushed in, moving to help Red. Pika and Chuchu had already been roused from their slumber. They stared at Red, worry etched on their small, yellow faces. They kept their distance though, fearful of getting in Nurse Joy and Chansey's way as they tried to help the boy lying ever motionless on the light blue sheets.

Green put his lips to Red's knuckles, kissing them softly.

Nurse Joy buzzed around them, instructing Chansey to do this or that with an air of urgency, worry only slightly audible in her voice.

Yellow's eyes grew as wide as saucers when she saw what was going on. She glanced at the heart monitor, watching as the red yellow line transmogrified, changed in hue; yellow to orange to red.

_Red._

Green knew what was coming. He had known the moment he had heard the phone ring. Somewhere, somehow, he had known. Green had known from the beginning – Red's stolen childhood, fighting Team Rocket and Giovanni on his own, battling and capturing Mewtwo single-handedly, Green leaving him at Silph Company to save his own grandfather by himself, _everything_.

It was going to kill him.


End file.
